Cover Story
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A hilarious, emotional love story about an extremely anxious publicist who's tasked with keeping an extremely gay starlet in the closet—but who ends up falling for her instead.
It's 2005, and Ali is a publicist for Hollywood's biggest stars. Part of her job entails keeping gay celebrities in the closet—which is pretty ironic, since she's a lesbian herself. When Ali is assigned a new gay client, Cara Bisset, who's breaking onto the scene with a (hetero) romantic blockbuster, keeping Cara's sexuality under wraps becomes Ali's biggest challenge yet.
Cara is unruly and unpredictable and hates that she has to hide such an integral aspect of her identity. After a series of increasingly close calls, Ali is sent on the worldwide promotional tour for the movie to help keep Cara in line. Instead, she finds herself drawn to Cara's confidence and bravery. For the past year, Ali has been mired in grief after losing her partner in a freak accident. But with Cara, Ali's fears about the world subside, and she begins to question the Hollywood closeting system she’s helped perpetuate.
As Cara's fame continues to rise, both Ali and Cara have to decide which is more important: maintaining the status quo or risking it all for another chance at love.
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Celia Laskey is the author of So Happy for You and Under the Rainbow, a finalist for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her other work has appeared in Catapult, Guernica, The Minnesota Review, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the University of New Mexico and currently lives in Los Angeles with her wife and their dog Whiskey.
